Time to Say Good Bye Uncle Sam

"As President, my greatest responsibility is to protect the American people…We are in Afghanistan to confront a common enemy that threatens the United States, our friends and allies, and the people of Afghanistan and Pakistan who have suffered the most at the hands of violent extremists. So I want the American people to understand that we have a clear and focused goal: to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and to prevent their return to either country in the future…To achieve our goals, we need a stronger, smarter and comprehensive strategy."--President Barack Obama March 27, 2009

When the US President Barack Obama took the affairs of states, things were chaotic and people had high hopes that he will change the country. But unfortunately for the US citizenry, things are not improving fast enough. The country is suffering from serious economic ailments like poverty, unemployment and unstable financial markets. Things outside of the borders are not much better either when it comes to America’s influence and impact. And so while the President, despite his historic majority in the Congress and Senate, tries to wrangle and wrestle for his various reform packages, he is also trying to refocus and revamp the foreign policy.

Afghanistan and Pakistan, instead of Iraq (and Iran) are now priority countries. To the dismay of his voters, President Obama is not undoing the actions of former President George Bush. Or at least whatever he is doing is quite different from the promises he made during his campaign. There is a huge gap between speeches from the capital and voices from the grass roots. While millions of Americans are actively demanding an immediate pullout from Afghanistan, such a concept is still viewed as extremely unrealistic and improbable.

According to popular news channel, CNN, fifty-four percent -- including three-quarters of Democrats-say they oppose the war in Afghanistan. In a Washington Post-ABC News poll (13-17 August 2009), majority of Americans see the war in Afghanistan as not worth fighting and just a quarter say more U.S. troops should be sent to the country. Majority liberals and Democrats solidly oppose the war and are calling for a reduction in troops. Two-thirds of liberals and six in 10 Democrats are against a troop increase.

But while addressing the Veterans of Foreign Wars on 17th August 2009 in Phoenix, President Obama could not have been more definitive. “We must never forget,” he said of the conflict in Afghanistan. “This is not a war of choice. This is a war of necessity.” Officials say, the West isn't ready yet to make a deal. “Reconciliation is important, but not now,” one Western diplomat told the New York Times recently. “It's not going to happen until the insurgency is weaker and the government is stronger.” An amendment in June 2009, requiring the Pentagon to tell Congress what its strategy was for ending the war failed in the House, 138-278. But in an important milepost for future efforts, it was supported by a majority of House Democrats. In the Senate, USA is much further back: a bill calling for an exit strategy from Afghanistan has not even been introduced.

USA has a fruitless presence in Afghanistan and actively seeks to position itself in South Asia given the active rise of China, India and Iran. History has proven that no one can invade and then conquer Afghanistan, be it Alexander the great, Britain or Russia. Since the invasion of Afghanistan eight years ago, the United States has spent $223 billion on war-related funding for that country, according to the Congressional Research Service. Aid expenditures, excluding the cost of combat operations, have grown exponentially, from $982 million in 2003 to $9.3 billion in 2008.

USA is not a fast learning student, even though it has an impressive track record at wars (civil war, WW II, Cold war, Vietnam, Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan) through out its life. In Afghanistan, the United States still insists on fighting a secular counterinsurgency, while the enemy is fighting a holy war- a “Jihad”. War versus Jihad is madness, the intersection of how insurgencies end and how jihads end is nil. With such sophisticated weaponry, surveillance and soldiers of steel, the US government has failed to hunt down the one man who wrote a new chapter in history by showing the world that even the greatest, most powerful country in the world is vulnerable and can be weak. I suppose, however, in all fairness one should not judge American war shenanigans too harshly. Afterall, it’s hard to defeat an enemy one does not understand nor wants to.

Afghanistan is the latest case in point. USA is using the “sweep and clear” tactic - clearing tiny patches of ground for short periods in a big country in the futile hopes of killing enough enemy to make him out his tail between the legs and quit. What the American generals and even politicians don’t understand is that the Talibans are not mere humans, what they do is not just a job which they are hired or paid to do; being a Taliban fighter, a “jihadi” is a philosophy, a code of life, whether it is the right code or the wrong one, an extremist or moderate one is besides the point. And you can not eliminate a philosophy just by killing a hand full of men with beards and “topis”. In July 2009, the Americans launched a major offensive in the Helmand province, which is a Taliban bastion. But barring limited successes in the initial stages, the offensive has not served to destroy the Taliban’s power. In fact, as reports confirm, the Taliban feel themselves strong enough to move out to the country’s north and northeast. No wonder the casualties suffered by the US-led allies this year are higher than those in the corresponding period in any previous year.

On 24th August 2009, Sen. Russ Feingold, D-WI, called on President Obama to announce a timetable for withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan. “After eight years, I am not convinced that pouring more and more troops into Afghanistan is a well thought out policy.” said Feingold. The troop buildup strategy in Afghanistan is not likely to succeed. The more foreign troops stay in Afghanistan and the more their numbers increase, the more they provoke the Afghanis, who while being an incredibly hospitable nation, have traditionally and historically had a zero tolerance for foreign soldiers on their soil. In the ultimate analysis, there has to be a negotiated end to the war. But there is very little evidence that Obama administration is trying vigorously to formulate a sound exit strategy.

American political gurus forecast that the establishment of a legitimate, secular national government is the end goal of the US and THE solution to eliminate terrorist sanctuaries. Once again, this is a pipe dream, one which has seen miniscule results in neighboring Pakistan and further afield Iraq. Pakistan has a legitimate, secular, national AND democratic government- a government that the US of A had a huge hand in installing, and yet terrorism spilled from the outskirts of its Northern Areas to its urban hubs, just as its masses continue to suffer social, economic and political ailments. The picture in “democratic” Iraq is no different from that in Pakistan, which is now a branded “failed state”. With the exception perhaps that Pakistan does not host American forces and troops YET on its soil, and both Afghanistan and Iraq still do. Washington should learn from these experiences and remember that even with the “voted in” Kabul government (which is not really technically new since Karzai still remains the touted winner), this dream can not be fulfilled. The new state will and can never be legitimate because “democracy” is not a legitimate source of governance in Afghanistan. Legitimacy in Afghanistan over the last thousand years has come exclusively from dynastic and religious sources. The fatal blunder of the United States in eliminating a ceremonial Afghan monarchy was Afghanistan’s diem coup: after that, there remained little possibility of establishing a legitimate, secular national government.

Obama administration want to stabilize Afghanistan without considering the ethnographic aspect- One of the basic reasons many Pashtuns support the Taliban insurgency is that their historic rivals, ethnic Tajiks, hold most of the key levers of power in the government. Pashtun tribes make up an estimated 42 percent of the population of 33 million but Tajiks constitute only about 24 percent of the population, yet they largely control the armed forces and the intelligence and secret police agencies that loom over the daily lives of the Pashtuns.

According to Stephen M. Walt, a Harvard Professor, “First, we should not lump all jihadists in South Asia together; only some want to attack American targets. Second, that if, in the unlikely event, the Taliban came back to power in Afghanistan it’s not clear that they would continue to give al Qaeda a safe haven there. Third, anyway Afghanistan is hardly an ideal place from which to launch attacks against the United States. Fourth, that if the Taliban were in power in Afghanistan, the U.S. would still be able to take out any jihadist training camps based there. Fifth, an expanding American presence in Afghanistan will only feed recruitment to groups like the Taliban and al Qaeda.”

Finally, Walt suggests that “one might also take comfort from the Soviet experience. When the Soviet Union withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989, the mujahidin didn’t ‘follow them home.’ Were the United States to withdraw from Afghanistan and the Taliban to regain power (or end up sharing power, which is more likely), going after the United States won’t even be on their ‘to do' list.”

So what should Uncle Sam really be doing? For one thing, before making any new, fresh plans to deal with terrorism in AfPak, Washington must devise an exit strategy. “USA is undergoing an economic crisis causing emotional uncertainty amongst Americans. The last things Americans need to be doing right now is curb terrorism as the lone ranger.” said Sarah Siddiq, Visiting Associate at SDPI policy think tank in Islamabad, Pakistan. It is high time for the US of A to step back from other borders and frontiers and respect the might, the intellect and the sovereign rights of other nations to deal with terrorism in their own way and in their own time. America has experimented enough. Instead of focusing outside, America should take stringent measures to look inwards. The world will not come to an end if the US embassies are closed in high alert countries for an unlimited time and no visas are granted, for fear of “terrorist” infiltrations from countries left to fend for themselves. Sure, establish economic units responsible for trade of goods with other those “problem” countries, but reduce mobility of human capital. Divert hard core technology and research in the fields of medicine, agriculture, environment and manufacturing. And for heaven sakes, cut down funding of weapons and the military. True, that the US is NOT the only nuclear state anymore, but the Americans are way ahead of every other country in the world, not just in terms of numbers of WMD, but also artillery and weapons of every possible kind and size. So start believing “Live and let live”. Educate the young American youth and stop depending on the Chinese and the Indians to keep your economy running. Bring back economic efficiency by employing Americans and boosting local industries rather than outsourcing. Make other countries your friend and stop dictating your terms and way of living on other nations, as they are already rich enough with their own cultural, social and religious values, not to mention problems.

Start reducing the influx of troops and ground-combat operations. Let institutions develop themselves in Afghanistan and use diplomacy to fracture the Taliban. Within one year withdraw all United States military forces from Afghanistan and center on regional and global counterterrorism efforts and homeland security initiatives to protect your own shores and border from threats that might emanate from Afghanistan (or Pakistan). Scrutinize financial flows of militant groups and individuals and then take proactive measures in coordination with other fellow nations. Give a chance to other nations and its people to learn from their own mistakes and become mature democracies (or otherwise). Its time to develop relationships of mutual trust, dignity and RESPECT. For in the famous words of George McGovern, I, too, am “fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in.”